Who Let The (Watch) Dogs Out? Ubi, Ubi, Ubisoft!
Watch Dogs was one of the first “next gen” games we ever saw, even if at the time we didn't know for sure if it was “next-gen”. At Ubisoft’s 2012 press conference Watch Dogs was the finale, the “One last thing…” moment of the conference and caught everyone’s attention. It looked fantastic and seemed to be a good sign of what the “next-gen” would be capable of. 2 years later and after a last minute delay, Watch Dogs has finally been released. But does it live up to that amazing reveal 2 years ago? Well…not really.
Developed by Ubisoft Montreal, Watch Dogs is an open world action game, similar to Grand Theft Auto. Set in Chicago, you play as Aiden Pearce, a hacker who is pretty good at shooting too. After a “hacking” job goes bad, you lay low and spend time with your sister,niece and nephew. But someone isn’t happy about what happened at that last failed job and sends a person to kill you. They fail, but kill your niece instead and the game starts after all this, 11 months later. Aiden is trying to get revenge on the person or people who ordered the hit and whoever caused the death of his young niece.
I actually enjoyed how Watch Dogs changed up the classic story of “They killed my son/daughter” and instead made you a uncle. It fits Aiden really well actually. Aiden is a nice guy, but seems a bit weird and closed off. It makes sense he doesn’t have any kids of his own and he makes a great “Weird Uncle”. Other than that Aiden is sort of a boring and generic white dude. He has a gravelly voice and gets angry sometimes. Thats his character in a nutshell. He never really grows or changes as a character, something he even acknowledges a bit towards the end of the game.
The other characters you meet are more interesting, but never feel like they are given enough screen time to actually become anything meaningful. Your sister seems like a woman trying to keep things together after the death of her daughter. She seems strong, but not perfect. But you barely get to see her and by the end of the game she, like other characters just sort of disappear for long stretches of time while Aiden does other stuff.
To me the story just feels like it could have been told in 4 hours, but instead is stretched out over 30 missions and tons of cutscenes. The middle half of the game is where it really slowed down, with Aiden literally just doing errands for hours, until the game decided to get back to the story or bring back a character from hours ago for me to care about.
Gameplay in Watch Dogs focuses on gun combat, driving and hacking. The combat feel a lot like the last few Splinter Cell games, you are quick and able to duck in and out of cover smoothly. Aiden is pretty nimble and your able to do some basic parkour over fences, cars and small walls.
You can stealth a lot of the game or shoot everyone and everything. There is a nice variety in weapons, from shotguns to silenced pistols and grenade launchers even.Driving feels a bit loose but weirdly stiff. Cars feel hard to control at higher speeds and at lower speeds to easy, or sensitive.Over time I got use to the driving, but I didn’t have a whole lot of fun doing it.
What changes the combat and driving up from other open world games is the hacking. Aiden is able to hack all kinds of objects, from phones to fuse boxes, cameras to even, weirdly, grenades. Hacking adds a nice amount of options to nearly every scenario. You can use cameras to hack your way around an area, spotting enemies and setting up traps or even just blowing up stuff to kill unsuspecting thugs. When driving you can hack bollards that will pop up and wreck vehicles that are chasing you. You can also hack bridges creating ramps and stopping your pursuers. The hacking in Watch Dogs actually adds a lot the game and makes it feel different enough in comparison to games like GTAV and Sleeping Dogs.
Hacking, combat, driving and more all have skill trees that you can put points into. Doing so will unlock new abilities like more ways to hack the world or becoming faster at reloading. The skill tree ends up feeling sort of worthless though as most players will end up with enough points to fill the whole tree up, making the choices feel less important.
As mentioned earlier Chicago is where Watch Dogs is set, and sadly its a pretty lifeless city in the game. People don’t seem to react like actual people, the city sounds too quiet and artificial, the streets are empty with only a few people and cars here and there. The whole place just feels dull. This becomes worse when you leave the city and visit the countryside.Out there you will encounter even less people, cars, building and any sense of life. Its just average looking trees and grass.
Average looking is how I would describe most of Watch Dogs visuals. There are some nice water effects and some nice character models but the majority of the game looks just..ok. There is a ton of pop in, where trees or people just magically pop in to reality in front of you. Draw distance is pretty abysmal. There are jaggies everywhere and the game’s framerate dips more often than I expected. I was playing on PS4 and had dozens of glitches as well as visual issues. Missing checkpoints, missing sounds, pedestrians stuck in walls, weird lighting bugs and even a complete crash at one point. The whole game just feels a bit unsteady and doesn’t look like the game we all saw 2 years ago at E3.
While Chicago and the surrounding countryside and small town area are lifeless they are far from empty. In the world you will come across tons of different things to do and collect. When I say tons of stuff I mean TONS of stuff. Too much stuff to be honest. At anytime my map had dozens of icons on it. Side missions, activities, collectibles, investigations, random crimes, stores, CtOS towers, audio recordings and more. I’m almost 30 hours in and I STILL haven’t hit half way on collecting and completing everything this game has to offer. Now having all of this stuff to do isn’t a bad thing necessarily, as long as it doesn’t all feel to similar.
Unfortunately Watch Dogs’ side content all feels the same. You drive cars, you shoot people you hack something. That is all you do in the side missions and activities. There are a few exceptions, like poker or the AR games where you shoot aliens or collect coins. There are also “digital trips”, where Aiden essentially hacks his own brain with…drugs? These digital trips are where the game goes full Saints Row, allowing the player to control a giant robotic spider tank or fight off zombies in a car or more.These are fun and surprisingly deep, with there own stats, skill trees and more.
A feature I enjoyed a lot in Watch Dogs is the ability for you to hack other peoples games or for other players to do the same to you. At any time you can be invaded by another player. Sometimes they will try to hack you and you must find them before they can finish the hack. Other times they will be in your game with no indication they are there, and they must get close and observe you for a set amount of time and leave. If they succeed in watching you for long enough they leave and you’re told you were just observed, which happened to me. It was a slightly creepy feeling, in a good way though, a way I hadn’t felt in a game before. This other person was in my game, watching me, and I didn’t even know it. I really enjoyed this aspect of multiplayer, the adrenaline rush of getting closer to the other player and not being discovered was incredible and successfully pulling one of these off felt great.
The other parts of multiplayer are less interesting and not much fun. Races are just that, races against other players. The driving never felt fun or good enough to race against other people and I guess other people agree as it took me a long amount of time to find a race.
There is a mode where players on the mobile app can try and stop you as you race through checkpoints. It’s interesting at first but after the novelty of it wore off, which for me happened after one race, it really is just a point to point race where sometimes cops chase you. The mobile side of things is just a map and you click stuff hoping to stop the arrow that represents the other player’s car. Its not very fun beyond the novelty of using a tablet to play against a console player.
There is also a mode where you have to hold onto a digital file and hack into it. This can be played 4v4 or free-for-all style. But the whole thing felt unbalanced and I got spawn killed dozens of time. Not much fun. Free roam is also available, you can explore Chicago with some friends but the city just isn't dynamic and there is no real incentive to warrant more than a half hour or so of messing around.
While I played Watch Dogs I couldn't shake this feeling that there is a good game in here, somewhere.But repetitive side activities and a story that feels stretched out left me feeling bored by the time the game wrapped up. Being able to hack while in combat or driving really added a lot of options to game, but didn't change the fact that the city felt empty and lifeless. The ability to hack other players games, or have your game hacked was neat but disappointing graphics and performance hiccups made Watch Dogs feel like it just wasn't ready. And by the time the story wrapped up I was ready to move on.
[This review was originally posted on my personal blog on June 26th 2014]
